Take a release descriptor created by the Maven Release Plugin and use that to perform the actual release.
'org.apache.continuum:continuum-release:1.3.6'
<dependency>
<groupId>org.apache.continuum</groupId>
<artifactId>continuum-release</artifactId>
<version>1.3.6</version>
</dependency>
<dependency org="org.apache.continuum" name="continuum-release" rev="1.3.6"/>
"org.apache.continuum", "continuum-release", "1.3.6"